The Art of Running: 140km Olaf

As temperatures rise in Tokyo, what better way to keep cool than by running a 140km picture of Olaf on the streets of Tokyo?!

Starting with his left foot down in Yotsuya, and ending with his hair (twigs!) up by the Sumida river, I ran this course in 26 parts over a period of 10 days. To make sure it resembled Olaf as closely as possible, I mapped out 337 points I’d need to run to (in a specific order), and then used Runkeeper to record the trail (original data in Google Earth format here).

Whilst of course we all know Olaf loves the summer, I had actually planned to finish this course 6 months ago, in the winter! Back at New Year, my son Ricky was obsessed with Frozen, and in particular Olaf – so I thought I’d draw a really big one for him! When my running schedule was interrupted by various projects, I had to put Olaf on hold… and of course Ricky has moved on from Olaf – now he’s obsessed with trains and helicopters!

Some parts of this course were very challenging: ironically the hardest part was one you can hardly see – the snowflake just to the right of Olaf. Despite its tiny size, it took about 16km to run due to it’s complex pattern (like the real thing!) and a lack of suitable roads. The eyes and nose were also a challenge as there I had 5 circles all meeting in the same place, and it was tricky to stay on the correct route, despite my colour-coding them in Google Maps ahead of time.